"Guns, Germs and Steel": Jared Diamond on Geography as Power

National Geographic News

July 6, 2005

Why did history unfold differently on different continents? Why
has one culture-namely that of Western Europe-dominated the development of the
modern world? In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book Guns, Germs and Steel, scientist
Jared Diamond argues that the answer is geography. The physical locations where
different cultures have taken root, he claims, have directly affected the
ability of those societies to develop key institutions, like agriculture and
animal domestication, or to acquire important traits, like immunity to disease.

Now the book has been turned into a three-part National Geographic Special,
which airs on PBS on three consecutive Mondays, July 11, July 18, and July 25,
at 10 p.m.

National Geographic News spoke with Diamond, a professor of geography,
environmental health science, and physiology at the University of California in
Los Angeles.

Why over the past 10,000 years has the development of different societies
proceeded at such different rates?

I say the answer is location, location, location. It's overwhelmingly due to
the difference in the wild plant and animal species suitable to domestication
that the continents made available. All the interesting stuff like technology,
writing, and empires requires a productive economy that is producing enough
food to feed technological experts, bureaucrats, kings, and scribes.
Hunter-gatherer societies don't produce enough food surpluses to support those
extra people. Agriculture does.

Where did the first farming societies appear?

The first farming, as far as we know, appeared in [the Middle East region
known as] the Fertile Crescent some 11,500 years ago, and shortly thereafter in
China. These places had the greatest variety of wild plants and animals
suitable for domestication. Only a tiny fraction of wild plants and animals
were both useful and possible to domesticate. Those few species were
concentrated in a few areas, of which the two with the greatest variety were
the Fertile Crescent and China.

What were the benefits of the agricultural lifestyle compared to the
hunter-gatherer existence?

Farming lets you feed far more people than hunting and gathering. In a
one-acre [0.4-hectare] wheat field there's more to eat than in a one-acre
forest. In a one-acre sheep pasture, there are more animals to eat than in a
one-acre forest. Also, farming lets you settle down in villages next to your
wheat fields and pastures, whereas hunter-gatherers have to move around.

You point out that knowledge and new technology spread east and west much
easier than north and south.

The reason is easy to understand if one understands geography. Climate,
temperature, seasons, and habitat all depend strongly on latitude. Above 85
degrees north, you don't have tropical rainforest, you have Arctic ice fields.
Certainly plants and animals tend to be adapted to particular habitats and
climates. The same is also true of people. The practices of the farming
societies in the Fertile Crescent are easily transferred west [to Europe].

What is the link between agriculture and war?

Farming makes possible the development of technology, including military
technology. Wars are not something new invented by those nasty Europeans.
Everyone about whom we have enough knowledge has been involved with wars.
Groups of people are competing with neighbor groups, and any group that
develops some advantage is likely to be able to fight off, conquer, drive out,
or exterminate their rivals. Throughout human history there's been this reward
for developing more potent technology, including military technology.

The Spaniards certainly used weapons technology to their advantage in
defeating the Incas.

In the battle of Cajamarca [in 1532, in what is now Peru], 169 Spaniards faced
an army of 80,000 Inca soldiers. In the first ten minutes, there were 7,000
Incas dead. When the dust settled, not a single Spaniard was dead. [Spanish
conquistador] Francisco Pizarro got a slight wound. That's because the
Spaniards have the steel sword and the Incas have wooden clubs. It really
showed the power of military technology.

In a way, the Spaniards also unwittingly deployed powerful biological
weapons, including smallpox.

It is estimated that 95 percent of Native American casualties throughout
North and South America were due to disease rather than military conquest.
Smallpox killed about 50 percent of the Incas in the first epidemic.

Why did the Spaniards pass this disease on to the Incas and not the other
way around?

It turns out that most of the nasty, infectious diseases of human history
came to us from domestic animals. Thirteen of the fourteen herd domestic
animals were Eurasian species. The only herd domestic animal of the New World
was the llama, but the llama didn't live in really big herds. So we didn't get
diseases from llamas, but we did get diseases from pigs and sheep. And Eurasian
people in general got exposed to these diseases at childhood and therefore
developed an immune system. In the New World, smallpox arrives and nobody is
exposed to it, so it's hitting everybody, including adults.

When the European settlers arrived in southern Africa, it was the same
story at first. But as the settlers went north, they soon began to encounter
problems.

People of the north were farmers themselves, and it's possible that they had
been exposed to smallpox. What we're sure of is that Africans had tropical
diseases [such as malaria] to which they had some resistance. But Europeans did
not have resistance. In tropical Africa, the disease advantages were reversed.
Instead of Europeans carrying diseases that wipe out the locals, the locals
carry diseases that wipe out the Europeans. That's why the Europeans never
settled in large numbers in Africa outside of the temperate zone of southern
Africa and the highlands of Kenya.

Africans developed complex farming societies, and they were able to stave
off the European intruders. Yet ultimately the Europeans conquered Africa
through colonialism. Is that why much of modern Africa is mired in poverty?

Africa today, paradoxically, is the poorest continent. I say paradoxically
because this is where humans evolved, so [humans] had a huge head start in
Africa. Tropical diseases kept the Europeans out at first, but those tropical
diseases nonetheless pose a big public health and economic burden on Africa
today. That is linked with colonialism. Europeans could not settle in large
numbers, but what they still could do was to extract wealth from Africans,
initially slaves, then rubber, diamonds, and copper. Basically that means
robbing Africans and setting up legalized institutions for corruption.
Colonialism also changed the Africans' traditional way of life. They moved to
cities next to the mines where their immunities no longer provided protection
against tropical diseases.

There is a scene in the film where you react very strongly to seeing some
children dying of malaria in a Zambian hospital. Is there a disconnect between
thinking about these huge issues as a prominent academic and seeing them in
action up close?

There is a difference between understanding something intellectually and
having something in your face. When I wrote Guns, Germs and Steel, I had
a whole chapter on Africa and a chapter on diseases in Africa. I was perfectly
aware of the statistics on malaria and so forth, but that is impersonal and
sanitized. It's different from standing there in a hospital and seeing kids who
were then the age that my kids had been and having flashbacks to one of my own
kids in a hospital. That's just an emotional experience and very different from
the sanitized statistics.

Do you worry that audiences may sense an inevitability in your
argument-as if we're destined to be either poor or wealthy depending on where
we are born, and that there is not much we can do about it?

If you make a complex argument, there will be people out there who will
simplify and misuse it. I recognize that there are people who will say
geography deals out these immutable cards and there's nothing we can do about
it. But one can show the evidence and say there is something we can do about
it. Look at Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan. They recognized that their biggest
disadvantage was public health. They didn't say, We got these tropical
diseases-it's inevitable. Instead they said, We have these tropical diseases
and they are curable and all it takes is money so let's invest in curing the
diseases. Today they are rich, virtually First World countries. That shows that
poverty is something you can do something about.

People have a misunderstanding that geography means environmental
determinism, and that poor countries are doomed to be poor and they should just
shut up and lie down and play dead. But in fact, knowledge is power. Once you
know what it is that's making you poor, you can use that knowledge to make you
rich.